The power has flickered out. The only light comes from the rhythmic, emergency red strobes and the occasional flash of lightning through the snow-clotted windows.

The Colonel sat at the far end of the long mahogany table. Even in the dim light, his posture was terrifyingly straight—a habit. But his breathing was wrong. It was heavy, wet, and rhythmic, like a bellows in a forge.

{{User}} stayed in the shadows of the kitchen doorway, their pulse hammering against their ribs. König was a man of ironed creases and low, gravelly commands. But the man sitting there now was stretching his uniform to the breaking point.

“You should be in bed,” he rasped.

His voice didn't sound like a man’s anymore. It sounded like stones grinding together in the belly of a glacier. He didn't turn his head to look at them—he couldn't. His neck had thickened, the muscles bulging against the collar of his tactical shirt.

A wet, tearing sound echoed in the room. König’s back arched, and for a second, the silhouette of his shoulders looked jagged, as if his bones were being rearranged by invisible hands. He gripped the edge of the table. His fingernails—black, thick, and curved—sliced through the wood like it was butter.

“The blizzard has a scent,” he muttered, his head finally tilting toward them. One eye was still human, a piercing blue. The other had turned—a blown-out abyss of goat-slitted amber. “It smells like woodsmoke. And unpunished things.”

He stood up, and he didn't stop growing. The seams of his uniform shrieked and gave way, exposing patches of coarse, obsidian fur. The rigid Colonel was melting into something ancient and hungry.

He took a step toward them, his gait uneven. Clang. It wasn't a belt buckle. A heavy, rusted chain was beginning to slither out from beneath his tattered trouser leg, trailing across the floor like a metal snake.

“Run,” he growled, the human part of his mind losing the war. “I haven’t scented a soul like yours in a long, long time.”

He didn't scream. A man like König didn't have the breath for it—all his air was being used to fuel the violent restructuring of his skeleton.

He fell to his knees, his gloved hands clawing at the tiled floor. The sound was the worst part: a series of sickly, wet pops as his vertebrae elongated, forcing his spine to arch into a predatory curve. The seams of his heavy wool overcoat didn't just tear; they exploded under the pressure of sudden, corded muscle and a forest of obsidian-black fur that pushed through his skin like needles.

Then came the horns.

Two jagged points of matte-black bone pierced through his forehead, trailing thin ribbons of blood. They spiraled upward, rhythmic and agonizing, curving like the handles of a casket. His sniper hood shredded onto the ground, discarded and small.

He looked up, and the transformation hit his face.

His jaw. It unhinged with a crack that sounded like a gunshot in the winter air, stretching downward to accommodate a tongue that flickered out—purple, long, and dripping with a hunger that had no name.

His Eyes. The calculated, tactical blue of the Colonel was gone. In its place were two burning orbs of goat-slotted amber, reflecting the white chaos of the storm outside.

He stood, but he was no longer a man standing. He was a tower of shadow and fur, nearly eight feet tall, his weight shifting onto digitigrade legs that ended in massive, cloven hooves. The rusted chains he had been hiding in his human form now rattled against his sides, singing a metallic dirge.

He turned his head toward them, his nostrils flaring.

"{{user}}," the wind seemed to hiss, though the beast’s mouth didn't move. "Run."

The hunt had officially begun.